Passage Theatre hosts ‘Solo Flights,’ a month-long series of one-person shows, including ‘Florida Girls.’
By: Stuart Duncan
Passage Theatre is hosting a month-long series of one-person shows a repertory display of the work of four New York performers at Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton.
Titled "Solo Flights" and in its second year, the series offers Manchild in the Promised Land, adapted by Joe Edwards into a one-man story of growing up on the streets of Harlem in the 1940s and ’50s. It also includes TranceZen Dance, in which John Woo Taak Kwon, a Korean-American, combines his Asian heritage with his California surfer upbringing in story and dance. Nancy Giles, who was last at Passage with Black Comedy, returns with Notes of a Negro Neurotic, which mirrors today’s society with its foibles and stereotypes.
The show I was able to visit last weekend, Florida Girls, is Nancy Hasty’s tale of growing up in the Florida panhandle area, complete with 15 members of her family, assorted folks in the area some friends, some foes. Now a confession: I am not a huge fan of the one-person show as a genre. Perhaps it has a place in cabaret, or perhaps in school assemblies, but I have never been entirely comfortable with it in theaters.
True enough, Mark Twain Tonight has brought kudos across the country. Indeed, Anna Deavere Smith has twice visited McCarter, the first time with Twilight: Los Angeles and the second with her one-woman dissection of the Crown-Heights Affair, titled Fires in the Mirror. Interestingly, however, the L.A. show did far better on the West Coast than back East. The other show was the exact opposite. That suggests television coverage of an event raises audience acceptance.
Ms. Hasty has honed her material to a fine polish. She began the piece in the 1980s and it covers a few simple events in the lives of her family her mother, father, five sisters, a grandmother, brothers from the neighborhood, a few people down the street. All blend easily, but without much spontaneity. The transitions are seamless, but the characters seem to blend into bland. We never really get to know these people and, to tell the truth, with the exception of a few moments spent with a fire-and-brimstone preacher, we don’t much care.
The evening comes alive only fitfully. The older sisters vie for the same first place prize in a local beauty pageant and come in only a point apart. The most we know about them is that one has too much hair; the other has a stye. We spend much time getting the kids up in the morning, off to school, preparing for a trip to the Smoky Mountains, via grandmother’s house.
A few tiny laughs, but few insights. Impressive, but not satisfying.
Solo Flights continues at Mill Hill Playhouse, Front and Montgomery streets, Trenton, through March 2. Florida Girls: Feb. 17, 5 p.m.; Feb. 20, 6 p.m. and Feb. 22, 8 p.m. Tickets cost $15 weekdays; $20 weekends. For information, call (609) 392-0766. On the Web: www.passagetheatre.org